https://www.thetimes.com/uk/royal-family/article/queen-victoria-angela-webb-milinkovich-k76nj8d0s

She said: “The story that my family grew up with is that John Brown and Queen Victoria had a romantic relationship. They went on a long boat journey. After that a child was produced and from that child came my family’s lineage.”

Both Webb-Milinkovich and Riddell have said they do not know if this is true, but Riddell thinks it is a possibility worth exploring.

She looked into the idea that the story might have become muddled. Victoria and Brown never took a long boat journey, but Hugh and his wife, Jessie, emigrated to New Zealand in about 1865. Their daughter Mary Ann was registered there, but their family home is not marked as the place of birth.

Then, in 1874, Victoria paid for Hugh’s family to travel back, housing them at Balmoral. When Victoria moved to Windsor, they followed.

Posted by ButIDigress79

11 comments

  4. I don’t even know where to start with this story and all the crazy details included, but I admit the theory is less ridiculous than it seemed when I just looked at the headline. (Am I reading this right that historians have Queen Victoria’s prolapsed uterus?? Yikes.)

    *The cast of Albert’s hand would be buried with her, but so would a picture of Brown, a lock of his hair and his mother’s ring, which Victoria had worn.*

    *Her children were expected to shake his hand as if he were an aristocratic equal — when her son Alfred refused to do so, he was expelled from Buckingham Palace — and Brown’s bedroom was next to Victoria’s.*

    *Riddell’s book Victoria’s Secret* 🤣

    I’d bet in favor of the theory that they were getting it on. But ultimately, I find it hard to believe that a sitting Queen could *give birth* in complete secrecy and never have it leak, though.

  5. Huh, interesting. She’s a descendent of John Brown’s brother, but family lore suggests that child may not have actually been his brother’s.

  6. Queen Victoria was in her 40s in the 1860s when the John Brown rumours came about. So the chances are her fertility had dipped. The chances of her having a perfectly healthy baby without any issue were very low.

    Add in that Victoria used chloroform with her last few births, so there would need to be doctors and her maids would have to keep the secret. As well as other people in her household. I’m sorry but there’s no way that would stay a secret all these years.

    Plus for all her religion, I think that Queen Victoria would have been very careful because she didn’t like her royal babies, she definitely wouldn’t like her shame baby. If she was getting in on with John Brown, there would be some barrier method.

    Beyond all that, I think that Queen Victoria was too obsessed with her sainted Albert to ever have a fling with John Brown. She may have liked his attention and friendship but Vicky was a world class snob!

  7. That was not the John Brown I was thinking it was before I read the article, lol.

  9. Interesting… the relationship being sexual isn’t hard to believe. But Victoria in her 40s getting through pregnancy and childbirth so quietly, I don’t know, possible but not nearly as plausible.

    Not sure why DNA tests haven’t already happened if there are so many of Victoria’s descendants she could ask.

  10. This completely dismisses the queen’s feelings, on everything.

    Victoria loved her husband, Albert.  Even though she did find companionship again after Albert’s death she wore black and grieved him the rest of her life.  

    Then there were her thoughts on pregnancy and babies.  She had nine kids in 17 years, 9 well documented pregnancies.  And she hated everyone, and thought babies were ugly, and called her daughters who breastfed cows.

    And she was loyal to the crown.

    Put those three things together and there is no chance she’d risk the crown with an affair.  And no way she’d risk a pregnancy, or even be able to hide one, and maintain her marriage.

    Weird ass narratives like this one piss me off.  

  11. I highly doubt it. I don’t doubt Victoria, in a difficult mental rut, found relief in companionship with Brown while still adoring her late husband, but I would be extremely surprised that the reigning Queen of the UK and of the British Empire would be able to hide what would be, in the somewhat offensive medical terminology, a geriatric pregnancy (and birth).

    She was surrounded by people nearly constantly – this was an age when servants were helping people _dress_ and do basic functions. She loathed pregnancy and childbirth and famously used chloroform – she would have had doctors present and just the sheer scandal and money in it would make it highly, highly unlikely that a very visible condition of a public* figure never leaked.

    So many other things that should have been easier to keep private than a 9-month pregnancy leaked (her son’s affairs, for example, or her own closeness to Brown), that’d I’d surprised at them keeping it that successfully secret or at the Press stopping at that point. The boon it would be for foreign powers!

    * Yes, secluded, but as still constantly surrounded by people, as above.

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